There are some numbers in this article:
Assuming that data to be correct, the beneficial side effect of voter ID laws is that many of the impediments to getting an ID have been removed, made free, or made easier - such as getting free birth certificates if you are applying for voter ID in the state of your birth. So this makes it easier for people to get jobs, get benefits, etc:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/id/html/why/why.shtml
As you did not seem to read the post:
Just wondering if thereâs any proof that those offices were shut down because of where they were.
Your non-answer was not very helpful.
I still have (somewhere) my Arizona non-driverâs driving licence, which I had to get to be able to drink in Phoenix as a British passport apparently wasnât valid ID.
The Tea Party reference (that also used to be in the BB postâs title) is a complete non-sequitur.
Can we talk about why that is some fucked up bullshit?
Iâll grant you the potential penalty is huge, but who is going to find out? The last time I voted all they asked for was my name and address. I could easily pull county tax information from the internet and have that. And there you go I just voted for whoever I wanted to. Obviously I wouldnât try and vote multiple times in the same precinct, but it wouldnât be hard to cast an extra 10 votes in whatever direction you wanted.
And Iâm not saying voter fraud is destroying the GOP or whateverâŚIâm saying it isnât complicated to do. Here BB makes a huge deal out of ECU software that can be hacked via a physical connection, when the odds of that happening are probably smaller than voter fraud. It doesnât have to be a photo ID, hell how about asking for your SSN or something harder to find than a home address.
What are they producing? Government offices donât have to be profitable in order to be necessary and justified. Itâs not like DMVs are ever economically productive.
Do you mean ânon-productiveâ as in, nobody comes in and gets licenses? Because I doubt thatâs the case. Theyâre choosing to shut down those driving test services and apparently also cutting the DMVâs budget by the same amount those driving test services cost. They arenât planning on improving the availability.
So⌠You donât have a drivers license but need one, just to get around, and now the DMV down the street no longer offers the test. The nearest office that does offer the test is suddenly 30 odd miles away, and is only open during business hours on weekdays, the same time as when you work your minimum wage job with no hopes of getting even a single day off without risking getting immediately fired.
The State, whether or not itâs intentional is making life shittier for people in the lower income demographics, and the history of the State points all ten fingers at âkeeping niggers out of the polls.â
Making it harder to drive often is the exact same thing as making it harder to vote though. Especially if you live out in the sticks and need to go 20-30 miles just to get to your polling place.
Thatâs why there are so many election judges and other volunteers there. Youâre not going to be able to go back 10 times and have someone not recognize that youâve already been there. Also, your signature has to match the signature they have in their books, which is filed with your name. And what if you pick a name of someone who voted earlier in the day?
To say nothing of the fact that even in a major city, Iâve never not known at least a few people at my polling place by name. The likelihood that you could show up to a rural polling place and not be recognized strains the imagination.
Like I said, the last time I voted there was no verification of anything to show I was who I said I was other than me giving my name and address verbally to the person working there. Ironically Iâve never known any of the people working at a polling place. They are usually held at a local school or church and since I donât have a need to go to either then why would someone know who I am? Besides if I drove across town to a different polling location that would make the likely hood of someone knowing me even slimmer.
On the aspect of someone that has already voted, yes that is a possibility and would just be an inherent risk of committing fraud. I never said it was foolproof, just that there were very few steps taken to verify who people really are.
The people involved in the polling are not necessarily those who regularly frequent the school or church. Theyâre just local community members.
A simple solution to this is what many states have done. Allow mail-in ballots for any reason.
Hold on a minute. Do some basic math. 8/15 = 53% and 22/52=42%, and now add in racial makeup of those counties. The closures are disproportionately affecting minorities.
How do you vote out of precinct? Your name wouldnât even be on the roster. Or are you saying thereâs an army of people who 1) figure out the names and addresses of registered voters all over town, 2) dispatch people to sub in for those voters at their various precincts, and 3) dispatch a second group of people to keep the real voters from being able to enter their assigned polling place for the entire day?
What state are you in? It sounds so strange to me, that you wouldnât need to sign or anything. I canât remember the last time I had to show my voter registration card, itâs true, but Iâve had the opposite problem from you many times: showing up where I was supposed to be and NOT being able to vote because they didnât have the documentation to verify I was supposed to be there. I wouldnât be able to go to a different precinct and sign in there, thoughâŚin one case, I ended up having to do the conditional ballot that is hand checked at a central location to make sure I hadnât voted somewhere else first.
Republican legislators have not even attempted to hide their contempt for the democratic process. In true Machiavellian fashion, they have displayed a willingness to take an ideological dump on the fundamental principles of our democracy in order to further their political agenda.
Since Republicans cannot count on the votes from key demographic sectors of the electorate, they have opted for a different approach â reduce the number of these citizens who are able to vote.
And so they have strategized (and to some extent, implemented) a multi-pronged effort to curtail the ability of minority, student, and elderly voters to participate in the election process:
Cull the registration database for names deemed to âprobablyâ be fictitious or otherwise fraudulent. (Anyone whose surname ends in â-ezâ is most certainly an invalid registrant âŚ)
Eliminate or drastically reduce early voting and/or reduce the number of election precincts., since student, poor, and elderly voters tend to have a more difficult time getting to the polls on the first Tuesday of November, and urban precincts are more likely to have extremely long lines that require you to stand for hours in line.
Create modern equivalents of the poll tax (part of the old Jim Crow laws) wherein selected demographic groups must incur out-of-pocket expenses to retain the right to vote.
Use gerrymandering policies to redistrict red states so that predominantly white rural regions that represent a minority of the populace attain the majority of the voting power.
With respect to the voter ID legislation/registered voter purges that have been pushed forth by Republican-controlled state legislatures under the guise of reducing nonexistent âvoter fraudâ, GOP legislators should simply cut to the chase and proclaim that the only Americans who have a legitimate right to vote are those who are registered members of the Republican Party.
Well, itâs complicated enough that the bozo who keeps trying to make all those âgotchaâ videos couldnât pull it off. The number of cases of people actually attempting is down into the literal one in a million.
As for the more common fixing of voting machines? Nary a peep.
Thatâs awesome, now all we need to do is get that information into the hands of people that may not even have an internet connection, past those who wish to suppress that constituency.
If policies are so bad the legislature is unable to retain essential services (such as driverâs licensing) in a normally populated community, then thereâs obviously a pot that needs to be stirred.
More than just racism is obviously at play here. There is a political party which desires to retain control. So they gerrymander. If thatâs not enough, they institute Voter ID laws. If thatâs not enough, then they close licensing and ID -issuing authorities in critical communities. The course seems pretty clear.
I think it goes beyond merely being polite to suggest that this represents a complete failure of policy.
[Edited for spelling.]
And there is the problem, right there.
Oh, concerned citizen, who Iâm sure is a race realist, so concerned with those race hustlers who are taking over this country you love oh so much, please tell us how racism doesnât really exist, despite all the evidence to the contrary for people in America who are black and are disproportionately impacted by events such as thisâŚ
Just a fucking coincidence, Iâm sure.
